The Ascent of Azure Dragon

The Ascent of Azure Dragon

2014 | Participatory Performance Sculpture | Vermont Studio Center

* This video is a 30 seconds excerpt of the video documentation.

Based on a fictional story about the cultural symbol of the Chinese Dragon, the performance was led by the music of a ukulele and consists of three parts: the rehearsal, the procession along the Green River and the assembling of the sculpture. The piece was an optimistic attempt to create a temporary community and a tangible moment through the structure of the sculpture.

Video by Monica Frisell, Vermont Studio Center

Gathering Among Stars

During her residency at Recology San Francisco, Ma Li has created a living installation that attempts to connect her sculpture to the community, providing a structure for people to build relationship with materials, the environment, and each other. The work happened in two parts. First, at Recology Artist in Residence Gallery, where those attending the opening reception participated in a choreographed performance and finally, at the Asian Art Museum where the installation was assembled.

The project was inspired by an interaction the artist had with a customer who, while dumping off materials, gave her a box. When she opened it, she found beautiful faux birds and flowers, and was reminded of the Chinese phrase, niao yu hua xiang (birds singing, flowers blooming), used to describe an auspicious spring day. With this gift, along with plastic water bottles, foam, window blinds, plastic tubes, and other materials, Ma Li has created a magical version of an idyllic spring. Her work also connects to the Chinese fairy tale of the Cow Herder and the Weaver Maid, lovers separated by a river of stars created by the maid's mother, the queen of the heavens, Small birds, so moved by the couple's love, flew together forming a bridge over the celestial river, enabling the lovers to be reunited. Ma Li hopes participants in her project, like the birds, serve as agents of greater social and environmental connectivity.

Gathering Among Stars

Video interview by Abhi Singh, KQED Arts

Chapter One — Meet You at the Bird Bridge in the Milky Way

Recology Artist in Residence Exhibition

Video by Richard Li Production

Ear Temple in Fan Land

In this project, participants experienced a fictional ceremonial event—honoring a shared moment of deep listening through collective actions that generated sounds out of the installation. Sound was made by the movement and contact between the materials and the interior of the gallery space. Through deconstruction, reconstruction, and re-appropriation of low-cost commodities and discarded materials, the indoor window facade was transformed into an ephemeral shrine-like structure that functioned as a "collective instrument." By transforming the daily gestures and objects into a dreamlike experience, the project is to celebrate the esthetic and spiritual value of mundane materials and ordinary actions.

Techno Taichi - Dance Dance Republik

Dance Dance Republik

2017.02.06 | Asian Art Museum | San Francisco, USA

2016.09.12 | Migrant Birds Space | Berlin, Germany

Inspired by the German techno scene and her upbringing in the collective society of China, Ma Li, first developed and presented Dance Dance Rebpublik in the former DDR (East Germany) area of Berlin. In an effort to connect newcomers and locals, Ma Li created TechnoTaichi, an interactive experience that engages participants through music, dance, live visuals, text, and emojis. The project is to foster a sense of community and encourage free individual expression by celebrating unification across culture, geography, history, and time.

Dance Dance Republik at Asian Art Museum (Teaser)

THE SAN FRANCISCO VERSION

Commissioned by the Asian Art Museum, Ma Li brought Dance Dance Rebpublik to San Francisco on February 16, 2017. This unique experience was recreated in the museum's stunning Samsung Hall with live visual and HD video projections highlighting the building's beaux-art architecture. Approximately 300 participants witnessed and took part in this event. This happening was recorded with a 360-degree camera and made into a tangible moment: a Virtual Reality video. In the future, audiences are able to immerse themselves in a three-dimensional cinematic space using a VR headset, surrounding themselves with participants of the performance. This will allow audiences around the world to re-enter the moment created by the participants in San Francisco.

Dance Dance Republik Interview

Located in the former Deutsche Demokratische Republik(East Germany), the multimedia installation is an effort to create a new format of connectivity between newcomers and locals. This performance engages participants with physical activity in response to game visuals. Simulating an enlarged "Dance Dance Revolution" game, Visual projection of text instruction and live body movement shines onto the windows of the gallery. The project borrows visual entertainment elements from casino games and audiovisual productions to connect people across age, culture, profession, and time. The project is inspired by the collective experience in China: groups of people practising Taichi, choir, or dance in public spaces, as well as the morning group exercise—a daily group routine carried out by students for physical exercise as well as generating community spirit. Through this collective experience, the project is to create a temporary community that celebrates the unification through synchronization at the same time creating safe environment to allow the free expression of individuality.

Bits en Route

This 12-channel video installation is made with 11 old TV monitors and projection mapping as well as the inventory of the gallery, namely stools, paper tubes, mirrors, pedestals, etc.

Inspired by her experience driving Uber in the tech-city San Francisco, Ma Li created this synchronized video-audio collage to raise the question: how does technology change our perception of distance, physically and emotionally? The materials selected are clips and images from the internet, and the sounds inside her car, conversations, google map navigation voice, and a techno soundtrack. Which then were orchestrated into a group dance carried out by the machines—projections and TV monitors. By combining the lifeless navigation voices and the self-expressive dance movements of the traffic police, this piece is a celebration and a reminder of what makes us human, especially in the fast evolving digitalized time we live in.

Seeing, Peeping, Scrying

* The video is a collection of cellphone video recordings taken by exhibition visitors.

This multi-media installation consists of five sculptures, one video and one participatory performance. It reflects the artist's ongoing interest in the deliberate act of looking, both socially and privately. Inspired by the history of the gallery, a famous sex shop in San Francisco Ma Li connected and transformed multiple space into an illuminated dreamlike world, with light sculptures and a dance installation mimicking the format of a peepshow. The artist draws a parallel between scrying, a practice of looking into translucent/reflective materials for a spiritual vision, and peeping, a private act set inside a mundane and intimate environment. The work blurs the boundaries between the quotidian and the mystical by encouraging new perspectives of looking.

In his poem "Kubla Khan", Samuel Coleridge offers us an idyllic vision of Xanadu, the summer capital of the Yuan Dynasty established by Kublai Khan in the 13th century, as a miraculous, sunny pleasure dome made of ice. This vision in turn lent itself to the naming of highly relfective area on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Ma Li's diorama piece draws on both the mythical images of Xanadu and its connotations as an otherworldly paradise.

Over the years, numerous installations have been created out of Elsewhere's collection and displayed in the various spaces of the museum. The living museum is as if a Pandora's box full of surprise in every corner. The idea of the piece is to create a miniature world within this magical world of Elsewhere, which exists within the real world. By identifying each elements within the piece, Ma Li encourages viewers to celebrate the spiritual nature of everyday life and the idea that everything and anything can be a portal into the mystical. The color of the changing LED light is based on the colors of the summer sky in Greensboro right before the sunrise.